Good Comments on the LCWR Reform

from John Allen, including this fun note:

...Whatever else comes from the tumult, it's already prompted one minor miracle that most Catholic observers probably thought they'd never live to see: Sr. Joan Chittister and George Weigel actually agreeing on something.



Chittister, of course, is a Benedictine and probably America's most prominent feminist sister. Weigel, a biographer of John Paul II, is a champion of orthodoxy. Politically speaking, they're usually matter and antimatter, yet on the question of how LCWR ought to respond to its present travails, they're on the same page.

Chittister made her comments in NCR's day-one story on the Vatican announcement. In effect, she said LCWR ought to disband canonically and then regroup outside the official structures of the church. Doing so, she said, might be the only way to avoid "giving your charism away" and "demeaning the ability of women to make distinctions."

In an April 23 essay for National Review, Weigel wrote that Chittister's suggestion "had the virtue of honesty" and "drew the curtain on a long-running charade" -- by which he meant that in his opinion, LCWR is outside "the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxis," so dissolving its official status would be recognizing reality.

To some, the fact that prominent voices on both the Catholic left and right seem to be reaching the same conclusion is a clear signal of where things stand...

And, in the midst of the cries about oppressing nuns and persecuting faithful religious women, it behooves us to read Allen's whole piece for context, remember the reasons why the LCWR are being given this mandate to reform, and remember what true persecution is really like.